The Manchester Film Festival 2026 is gearing up to be one of the UK’s most exciting independent cinema events of the year, running from 19–29 March 2026 across venues including HOME, Odeon Great Northern, Aviva Studios and more. The festival champions bold storytelling, emerging voices and celebrated talent from around the world, making it a highlight on the international film calendar.
The 2026 festival lineup features internationally recognised filmmakers and acting talent, bringing both established names and fresh voices to Manchester’s screens:
Father Mother Sister Brother
Estranged siblings reunite after years apart, forced to confront unresolved tensions and re-evaluate their strained relationships with their emotionally distant parents.
Couture
Set during Paris Fashion Week, three women’s lives intersect — a filmmaker, a model, and a makeup artist — revealing the unseen struggles and quiet resilience beneath the surface of beauty and performance. The film follows Maxine (Angelina Jolie), an American filmmaker who discovers she has a life-changing medical diagnosis and is drawn into an unexpected connection with a familiar collaborator; Ada, a fresh face in modeling, escaping a predetermined future back home in South Sudan; and Angèle, a makeup artist working in the shadows of the catwalks.
Erupcja
Combustible chemistry between a Polish florist and a British tourist in this charming postcard of sapphic synchronicity. While on vacation in Poland, Bethany (Charli XCX) breaks away from a romantic itinerary planned by her doting boyfriend, fearing that a marriage proposal is imminent. Reuniting instead with an old friend, Nel, the two women rekindle a uniquely combustible chemistry over the course of a few days.
Rose of Nevada
Mysterious boat returns to a village 30 years after vanishing. Two men join its crew hoping for better fortune. After one voyage, they find themselves transported back in time, mistaken for the original crew.
The Souffleur
Lucius Glantz, a veteran hotel manager in Vienna, fights to save his beloved establishment from a scheming realtor’s plan to demolish it, leading to a clash of wills that even affects the hotel’s renowned soufflé recipe.
Our Hero Balthazar
Wealthy New York City teenager Balthazar “Balthy” Malone has a crush on a classmate who organises gun control protests. To gain her attention, he creates dramatic social media videos pleading for stricter gun laws. When an online troll begins mocking his videos, Balthy becomes convinced that he is communicating with a potential mass shooter and impulsively decides to travel to Texas to confront him in person. What starts as a misguided hero’s journey evolves into a complex encounter between two young men from vastly different worlds, each struggling to find their place in a divided America.
The Last Viking
A bank robber released from jail must unlock his traumatised brother’s memory to recover stolen loot. Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas lean into the mayhem in the latest outrageous black comedy by Denmark’s Anders Thomas Jensen.
Lady
Lady Isabella longs to be in the spotlight, and the local talent show ‘Stately Stars’ offers her the break she’s long desired. Despite revelling in the camera’s presence on her grand estate, pressures run high, and things eventually take a surreal turn when she starts to lose her sense of self in this eccentric mockumentary.
The Cure
From the writers of Unsane comes a new psychological thriller inspired by chilling advances in biotech. Afflicted with a mysterious illness, Ally discovers that her billionaire adoptive parents have sinister designs linked to her recovery and the surrounding community. With twisted visions of macabre experiments haunting her, she must fight to escape the binds of the malicious medical condition as well as the fortified island compound or be drained of everything that makes her human.
Think of England
Six disparate souls are sent on a secret government mission to make propaganda porn films for the boys on the front.
Tickets available at: https://manchesterfilmfestival.app/